The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is a premier Indian government department under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).[4][5][6] The NIC provides infrastructure, IT Consultancy, IT Services including but not limited to architecture, design, development and implementation of IT Systems to Central Government Departments and State Governments thus enabling delivery of government services to Citizens and pioneering the initiatives of Digital India.[7]
Research for betterment of citizens and Government department and organizations is also carried out by scientists working in NIC .It recruits various scientists and Scientific/Technical Assistants almost every three years and many NIT and IIT graduates have joined this premier organisation in past few decades. NIC endeavours to cater to ICT needs at all levels of governance for making last mile delivery of Government services.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) was established in 1976 by Narasimaiah Seshagiri under the Electronics Commission of India and later moved under the Planning Commission of India before coming under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY - Hindi: इलेक्ट्रॉनिकी और सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी मंत्रालय). Additional Secretary Narasimaiah Seshagiri was the first to introduce a network system in India called NICNET.[8][9]
It is the technology partner of the Government of India and has been credited for helping the Indian government embrace IT in the 1990s[10] and has also helped disseminate e-governance to the masses[weasel words].[11]
It had an annual budget of ₹11.5 billion (US$140 million) for the year 2018–19.[2] Most of this is spent in providing free services to various Government Departments.
NIC's Network, "NICNET",[13] facilitates the institutional linkages with the Ministries/Departments of the Central Government, state Governments and District administrations of India.[14] NIC is noted for being the primary constructor of e-Government applications.[15] It also manages the National Knowledge Network.
In 2018, NIC opened its fourth data center in Bhubaneshwar to complement its existing data centers in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Pune.[3] In addition to the National Data Centres, NIC offices include Head Quarters situated in New Delhi and has State Centres in all 36 states and Union territories.[16][7] This is supplemented by 741 district offices.[7] With the ICT infrastructure, NIC District Centres are playing a pivotal role right from executing various projects under e-Governance and Digital India initiatives to day-to-day ICT-driven technical support to consultancy to various departments in the district.
Kapil Sibal inaugurating the ‘National Cloud’ MeghRaj in February 2014
National Informatics Centre developed GI Cloud named as MeghRaj. This project was launched by Government of India for cloud computing in February 2014.[17][18] MeghRaj Cloud offers a variety of service model like Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Services (Saas), Virtual servers, Kubernetes containers, DevOps, etc.[19] In April 2023, Jio Platforms secured a ₹ 350 crore contract to manage and improve the cloud services of National Informatics Centre (NIC) for five years for onsite maintenance at the National Data Centre in Delhi, Pune and Bhubaneswar.[19][20]
The following CoE(Centre of Excellence) has been established:
Artificial Intelligence
Blockchain Technology
Microservices
Data Analytics
Application Security
NIC established the Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence in 2019 to explore more opportunities for AI applications in governance.
In 2020, the Union Government and NIC has launched the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Blockchain Technology in Bengaluru.
NIC maintains the National Portal of India. The portal contains the Constitution of India,[23] and has a design objective to a single point to access the information and services of the Government of India.[9]
